NORTH, Frederick, Earl of Guildford, Lord North, lord warden and admiral of the Cinque Ports, governor of Dover Castle, lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Somersetshire, chancellor of the university of Oxford, rece-
der of Gloucester and Taunton, an elder brother of the Trinity House, president of the Foundling Hospital and of the Asylum, a governor of the Turkey Company and of the Charter House, was born on the 18th of April 1732. On the 20th of May 1756, he married Miss Ann Speke, an heiress of the ancient family of Dillington in Somersetshire, by whom he left two sons and three daughters. His lordship succeeded the celebrated Charles Townsend as manager of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, in 1770, on the resignation of the Duke of Grafton, was made First Lord of the Treasury, in which office he continued until the close of the American war, or rather until the formation of the Rockingham ministry, which bogged the business of peace with the colonies. He was a man of strong mental faculties, and an orator of very considerable powers, enlivened and recommended by much pleasantry and amenity; but taking the helm at a time when the king's party were unpopular, and when it was supposed that the Earl of Bute was the great engine by which the cabinet was moved, he continued in a state of great unpopularity until he resigned the seals. During the whole of his premiership, he studiously avoided imposing any taxes which could materially affect the lower class of people. The luxuries and not the necessities of life were repeated objects of his budget. As a financier he stood high, even in the opinion of an opposition forming a combination of all the great talents in the kingdom; but being fatally wedded to the destructive plan of subduing the republican spirit of the Americans, his administration is marked by an immense waste of the public treasure, and a lavish expenditure of blood. The very last time he spoke in the senate, however, he defended that war, and said he was then, as he had formerly been, prepared to meet the minutest investigation as to his conduct in that contest, which nothing but the unforeseen intervention of France could have prevented from being crowned with success. His lordship was one of the firmest and most strenuous supporters of the constitution in church and state. He died on the 5th of August 1792.